Next Live Production:

Join us in Portland, Oregon on

Saturday, March 22, 2008

7:oo p.m. @ Mississippi Studios

(Click here for address and directions)

Tickets at the door are $10, but you can pre-order your tickets here and save yourself two bucks.

Hosted by Jay Bates

And featuring the following artists:

Brian Doyle is a hirsute shambling shuffling mumbling grumbling muttering muddled humming meandering male thing who edits Portland Magazine at the University of Portland – “the finest spiritual magazine in the United States,” says Annie Dillard, clearly a woman of taste and discernment. He is the author of nine books of essays, nonfiction, and “proems,” among them The Grail: a year ambling & shambling through an Oregon vineyard in pursuit of the best pinot noir wine in the whole wild world. Among his other books are The Wet Engine, about “the muddle & mangle & miracle & music” of hearts; Spirited Men, essays about writers and musicians, and Leaping, essays about everything else. Doyle’s essays have appeared in The Best American Essays, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Orion, The American Scholar, and magazines and newspapers from Africa to Australia. His greatest accomplishments are that a cool woman said yes when he asked, three children came to them in mysterious skin boats from the sea of the stars, and he made the all-star team in a really tough basketball league in Boston, that league was so tough that one time a guy drove to the hole and got hit so hard his right arm fell off but he was lefty and made both free throws, so there you go.

Ann Whitfield Powers is currently completing a memoir, Isn't Forty Kind of Old For That? about starting late--something that seems endemic in her life. It's not sticking to the daily schedule that's a problem -- she is on time even for her dentist appointments -- but the big things --  marriage, motherhood, the writing life.  She taught English literature and creative writing at Linfield College for seven years before she decided to give up teaching for the considerably less profitable writing life. Her work has appeared in Oregon Literary Review, Literary Mama, The Miami Herald, and is forthcoming in Brain, Child Magazine. Her newest project is working in collaboration with a photographer and fiber artist on portraits of infertile women pursuing parenthood.  In addition to writing and mothering two young boys, she recently became obsessed with starting a new arts-integrated school, which she is thrilled to say opened this fall, and  where she now works part-time as the development director. As a graduate of the Rainier Writing Workshop, an MFA in Creative Writing at Pacific Lutheran University, she lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two sons.

Swingin' Amiss is a Portland band that puts jazz, folk, rock ‘n roll, bluegrass, and Tin Pan Alley, and maybe a dash or two of something else into a blender and presses ‘liquefy’ to create their sound, singing songs about love and the loss of it, faith and the loss of it, and the stories they tell themselves. They sing about other things as well like the death and resurrection of the spirit of rock ‘n roll, an old truck, and morning wood. Their history is long and sordid, members having come and gone like so much tumbleweed, but one thing remains certain: Swingin’ Amiss is the greatest band that few have ever seen.  You can discover more about the trio, made up of Connor Doe, Ben Haynor, and Eddie Dragonetti at their website, swinginamiss.com.   Or visit their myspace page to listen to a few of their tunes. 

Plus our standard favorite features:

Name That Book -- This audience-participation trivia contest will challenge your ability to name the titles and authors of three different books with only a short clue about the books history and reading of the book's first sentence. 

East Meets East Meets West Women's Book Club -- Be present with the charter members of this landmark book club as they discuss their recent reading of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.  It is sure to be the sort of literary discussion that may not inspire you to take notes, but just so you know, there will still be a fifty point pop quiz afterward.